Mono Lake Shoreline and Tufa, Dawn. Mono Lake, California. July 25, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Dawn illuminates the shoreline of Mono Lake, tufa towers, and the smooth surface of the lake.
In my previous post (“Abandoned Buildings, Eastern Sierra”) I wrote about not quite making it to the South Tufa area of Mono Lake at dawn, instead stopped five or ten minutes earlier to shoot some amazing red sunrise light on the eastern Sierra escarpment in the Parker Pass area. Fortunately, because Mono Lake is lower in elevation that the spot where I shot sunrise, by the time I got to South Tufa the sunset wasn’t that far along. In fact, by rushing out to the shoreline I managed to get there shortly after the first light hit the tufa towers.
This was one of the first photographs I made when I arrived, hence the very golden “first light” and the long shadows on the shoreline rocks in the foreground. It was an interesting morning: there were already plentiful signs that this would be a day of thunderstorms and rain with virga to the east and a developing weather cell already over the Sierra crest to the north. Despite all of the potential for “weather action,” it was very quite and still at this point, with only the sound of seagulls breaking the morning silence.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.
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